UC Berkeley Press Release

Senator Barack Obama and Molly Kawahata, a leader
of the high-school wing of Students for Obama.

BERKELEY – After
setting up house on Saturday, Aug. 23 in Unit 1 student
residence hall, Molly Kawahata promptly left town.
Missing out on Welcome Week festivities and her first
two days of college classes, the UC Berkeley freshman
took a Sunday flight to Denver — where she's a delegate
at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The Dems' big bash is a high point, not the beginning,
of Kawahata's involvement with the 2008 presidential
campaign. Inspired by the candidacy of Senator Barack
Obama, the Palo Alto native plunged headlong into
the fray in February 2007 — becoming
the California director, then national co-director,
of the high-school wing of Students
for Obama. The Obama campaign describes the group
as "one of the largest grassroots student organizations
in history."

Politics "doesn't run in my family," Kawahata
says of her foray into the presidential campaign. "This
was pretty much out of the blue." Dad
works in the Silicon Valley biotech industry, Mom
at Sunset Magazine as a cook; her two older siblings
are involved in finance and teaching.

What excites Kawahata about Obama, she says, is
his stance toward the corrosive partisanship that,
in her opinion, infects "all
levels" of American politics. "It's
something I can't relate to; I don't see how it's
constructive." Obama, she says, "does a
good job of playing in a game that's very set,
but rising above a lot of that."

Molly Kawahata introducing
Barack Obama at a November 2007 San Francisco
rally.

As a teen strategist and foot soldier for the Illinois
senator, Kawahata has volunteered untold hours, typically
five to eight per day, over the past year and
a half — planning strategy with fellow high
school organizers, attending caucuses, hosting conference
calls, and going to rallies. She's traveled to Iowa
and Nevada as an organizer, and has met Obama twice
in person — once
in November 2007, when she introduced
him at his San Francisco rally at Bill Graham Auditorium.

In Denver, the Berkeley freshman is
looking forward to meeting other young delegates
and attendees. (Among them will be Cal sophomore
Paula Villescaz, a delegate from the Sacramento
area who worked for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire
and Texas, and four other UC Berkeley undergrads.)
Kawahata is also excited about hearing
Obama's speech. "His
2004 keynote was incredible. Believing
we are Americans first, before Democrats or Republicans," was
the emphasis of that address, she says. "It's
been the emphasis of his campaign, and I think it
will be the emphasis of his presidency."

At the caucus this spring to elect delegates for
California's 14th Congressional District, Kawahata
submitted her name. She was 17 at the time, and had
30 seconds to give her pitch. "There were 40
people running, so they cut our time in half," she
recalls. Three delegates and an alternate were elected
to represent the district, which encompasses Silicon
Valley and other parts of the San Francisco peninsula.

Kawahata and fellow delegates from the 14th
will be posting their impressions on a
blog from
the convention. Following the grand
finale Thursday night at the Mile High City's INVESCO
stadium, she'll fly to Oakland the following morning
and head straight to campus — to make her
classes and, of course, touch base with fellow members
of Students for Barack Obama at Berkeley.

UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism students explore, through a package of multimedia and interactive features, the tough choices facing Americans and the next president in battleground states across the country.